When in Tokyo
by Stelra Etnae
Summary: Somewhere between winning gold at the 2017 NHK Trophy and flying back to Russia the next day, Yuri Plisetsky found himself sitting in a café out in Tokyo with a group of fellow skaters eating a ridiculous-looking strawberry parfait. What.


Yuri Plisetsky was the current record holder for the highest short program score _and_ for being the youngest ISU Grand Prix Final gold medallist in history. Prior to that he had been the three-times Junior World Champion and three-times Junior Grand Prix gold medallist, and right now was making a good running start to the new 2017-18 season by winning gold in the first Grand Prix qualifying event, the NHK Trophy.

He was an ice skating genius, the new hope of Russia's figure skating scene, the Ice Tiger of Russia, the Russian Punk…

All that didn't change the fact that there was an enormous parfait on the table in front of him, an obscene towering monstrosity of vanilla ice-cream, strawberries and whipped cream topped with multi-coloured sugar stars.

He glanced to his left. There was one familiar element to the scene at least, the steady presence of Otabek sitting quietly at his side. Except that he was eating a parfait as well, a chocolate-themed one that looked quite as ridiculous as Yuri's with its alternating layers of chocolate ice-cream and crushed cookies garnished with a swirl of cream and a useless sprinkling of mint leaves.

The dark-haired teen glanced over at Yuri when he saw him looking. "You don't like yours? Want to try mine? We can swap if you want." He held out a spoonful to him.

Honestly, Otabek was way too relaxed about this situation!

He ate the offered spoonful of chocolate parfait anyway.

It was the afternoon after the 2017-18 NHK Trophy in Tokyo, Japan, the men's singles free skate having finished that morning and all the medals awarded. Yuri had been considering spending the rest of the day just chilling with Otabek around the hotel when the both of them had been accosted on the way out of the stadium and dragged out to town by an over-excitable whirlwind.

Otabek was taking everything into stride in his usual placid manner, but Yuri's confusion was reaching a peak and it naturally spilled out as aggression. He fixed his glare on the key culprit of the whole scenario.

"What the crap is this?"

All he received was a slow blink. "Parfait."

Yuri twitched violently. "I know _that_. I mean what the fuck did you drag us all out here for?"

Instead of cowering in an appropriate fashion, Kenjiro Minami just grinned in response to his vitriol, polishing off another spoonful of his mixed fruit parfait. "I thought it would be fun if we younger skaters hung out together."

"HUH!?"

"I've always wanted to do this," a soft voice suddenly contributed. They all turned to look at Guang-Hong, who blushed brightly at the combined attention but continued. "Hanging out with friends at a café like this, I mean. It was always straight to the rink for practice after school for me."

"Ah, it's the same for me," Emil agreed, waving his spoon in the air as he spoke. "Thinking back, I kinda graduated high school without really doing much of the stuff my non-skater friends liked to do."

"Exactly!" Kenjiro's smile lit up even more. "That's why I thought it'd be awesome to spend some time out around Tokyo while we're here!"

"Living the high school student life for one day, huh." Leo grinned. "I'm up for it."

"Let's go to the arcade!" Guang-Hong suggested brightly. "I want to play the first-person shooter games!"

"I bet I'll beat you all on the racing games!"

"Bring it on!"

"Oh! Isn't karaoke really popular here?"

"Won't the songs be mostly Japanese though?"

"Nah, I'm sure they'll have English ones too."

"I want to buy manga!"

"That'll be in Japanese too, Emil."

"Shit, you're right."

"We can go to Akihabara anyway! It'll be fun!"

Yuri could only gape as the conversation derailed into a cheerful discussion about what to do for the rest of the day, the other skaters excitedly bouncing ideas to and fro.

What…was this?

A spoon intruded into his vision, the movement caught from the corner of his eye, and he turned back to see Otabek reaching out to scoop up a piece of strawberry from Yuri's melting parfait. The older teen licked the spoon clean, looking thoughtful as he glanced over at Yuri.

"It's not that bad, is it?" Otabek commented simply. Yuri knew that he meant more than just the parfait.

' _Will you be friends with me or not?'_ he remembered from one year ago.

' _I've always wanted to do this. Hanging out with friends,'_ Guang-Hong had said.

Friends…

After a brief moment of hesitation Yuri picked up his spoon and started to eat the strawberry parfait, the chatter of the rest of the group a warm buzz around him.

It wasn't too bad, he admitted.


End file.
